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Martin Shkreli

Martin Shkreli. Yes, the internet may hate this guy for his monopoly, but does the average public care, or does the government? The point of the cartoon is that

Yes, the internet may hate this guy for his monopoly, but does the average public care, or does the government?

The point of the cartoon is that overall, nobody cared the first time, but now the very rich, as well as the media, are protesting this arrest.

Go figure.

JUST Infill 't" s' inital i' . lla
...
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Views: 33457
Favorited: 38
Submitted: 12/21/2015
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+585
#1 - anon (12/21/2015) [-]
>left
used regulations to legally change the price. immoral but not illegal
>right
commited fraud. immoral and illegal
The FBI doesn't give a **** how bad of a person you are so long as you follow the rules along the way
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-25
User avatar #76 to #1 - uglychino (12/21/2015) [-]
they arrested him because he was going to free a rap star whos been wrongly in prison for a year.
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+31
#100 to #76 - anon (12/21/2015) [-]
Yeah, no, he was arrested for fraud and now has to literally give back millions of dollars to investors
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#132 to #100 - anon (12/21/2015) [-]
you, have, so, much, comma,
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#139 to #132 - anon (12/21/2015) [-]
Should have been: Yeah, no. He" instead. We know. But why so ******* whiney?
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User avatar #64 to #1 - welodog (12/21/2015) [-]
Price gouging is illegal
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+134
User avatar #92 to #64 - admiralen ONLINE (12/21/2015) [-]
So why havent they shut down all the hospitals and colleges in the US yet?
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#169 to #92 - skorchy (12/22/2015) [-]
>tfw just spent 500 dollars on textbooks for one semester of college.

And then whenever you get sick with a flu or similar, all professors require doctors notes in order for you to excuse your absence. Even with insurance, it costs money in order to get a stupid piece of paper to tell you what you already know; you're sick.

So then what happens? Well nobody has money to get doctors notes, and profs. are ridiculously harsh with attendance at my university (In most classes 3 absences means you failed the class), so kids just show up to class contagious as **** and then the campus turns into a cesspool of germs and bacteria.
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#65 to #64 - anon (12/21/2015) [-]
Except that's not what price gouging is.
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#75 to #65 - lollypopalopicus ONLINE (12/21/2015) [-]
Definition of the term: Price gouging is a pejorative term referring to when a seller spikes the prices of goods, services or commodities to a level much higher than is considered reasonable or fair, and is considered exploitative, potentially to an unethical extent.

He jacked the price of life saving medicine up ludicrously ******* high, which was unnecessary, as shown when a rival company started selling their version for a dollar.

So it was both unethical, due to it being life saving, and unreasonable in price. This is a text book case of price gouging.
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+4
User avatar #146 to #75 - swimmingprodigy (12/21/2015) [-]
It wasnt an unreasonably high price because the insurance companies paid for the medication so obviously they have the money to do so. And he also stated that if someone was without insurance who needed the drug, they were accommodated and didn't pay anywhere close to the new jacked up price.
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#160 to #146 - lollypopalopicus ONLINE (12/21/2015) [-]
Fun fact: Not everyone can afford insurance.
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User avatar #161 to #160 - swimmingprodigy (12/21/2015) [-]
what part of what i wrote did you not understand?

Those without insurance were accommodated and the company paid for the majority of the pills they needed. No one who didnt has insurance would have been charged more than the original price before it was raised
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#162 to #161 - lollypopalopicus ONLINE (12/21/2015) [-]
Would you have a link to what the estimates for that accommodation were? If I recall the accommodation was still poor.

Additionally, those with insurance often have their plans only cover so much, so even if they covered the pill (assuming they didn't just cover part of it) they could then find them self without insurance for other things they might need.
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User avatar #106 to #75 - makethingsworse (12/21/2015) [-]
$750 isn't considered unreaonable. Unreasonable would be 1500+, not a months paycheck.

I don't appreciate what he did, and I think he's the dumbest sociopath to grace headlines in quite some time- but he really was only screwing himself over by doing that. That medicine was by no means rare and if anything he made it easier for the competition to sell their product.
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#147 to #106 - jinxleven ONLINE (12/21/2015) [-]
Dude that is 750$ per pill. For toxoplasmosis the recommended dosage is 50-75 mg for an adult daily. At 25 mg per pill that means someone is taking two or three pills a day meaning they are spending 1500$-2250$ a day. Drug regimens usually last weeks with the regimen for Daraprim being 1-3 weeks. This means that for one regimen that someone would pay between $10,500-$47,250. Keep in mind that Daraprim is often used by people with HIV/AIDS or those who were treated with cancer due to their weak immune systems, people who already have astronomical medical bills for their other medical issues. Tell me how 750$ per pill is reasonable.

Sources:
www.drugs.com/dosage/daraprim.html
www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/toxoplasmosis/basics/treatment/con-20025859
www.drugs.com/pro/daraprim.html
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User avatar #183 to #147 - makethingsworse (12/22/2015) [-]
I apologize, sir. I had not realized I left out the part where this is the governments understanding of unreasonable.

Just to reiterate: I totally think 750 per pill is unreasonable. But obviously it did not occur to our federal system that it was.
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User avatar #137 to #106 - beardgasm (12/21/2015) [-]
It's not unreasonable to ask for a whole month's paycheck to pay for one prescription? It's not unreasonable to charge 1000 times what it cost you to make?

You have a very strange sense of reason.
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#113 to #106 - skebaba (12/21/2015) [-]
It is, though, for a common medicine. And it will only be 1 pill. If it was a box of them, then ok.
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#133 to #75 - uhhyeahfmebaby (12/21/2015) [-]
Except, werent the people that were going to be paying for these pills mostly be insurance companies? Also, I believe part of the reason for the price being jacked up so high was R&D and things of the sort.
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User avatar #74 to #65 - welodog (12/21/2015) [-]
Price gouging - a pejorative term referring to when a seller spikes the prices of goods, services or commodities to a level much higher than is considered reasonable or fair, and is considered exploitative, potentially to an unethical extent. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_gouging .... k
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User avatar #73 to #65 - pennydragon (12/21/2015) [-]
You're right, legally speaking price gouging in the US of A is defined a little differently than the normal meaning of the word.

It's like assault. Normally people think it means unlawful use of force on another person like punching them, but legally assault is defined as threatening a person with such an attack when you have the means to do that harm to them.
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User avatar #71 to #65 - machiavellianhumor (12/21/2015) [-]
how about scalping?
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User avatar #150 to #1 - assassindash (12/21/2015) [-]
I don't know, murder has always been illegal, right?

Pretend someone is holding on for dear life on the side of a building. In this case, that guy pretty much took away both their hands so the only way they could continue to hold on was by their teeth.

Isn't choosing to make a life saving drug extremely inaccessible to millions of people on purpose pretty much capitalistic murder? Honestly the laws for medicine should be a lot more strict and fair for the people in general than your average business. There shouldn't be the ability to take a monopoly for medicinal drugs in the first place....
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#163 to #150 - anon (12/21/2015) [-]
That's not how it works.

It's more like you are hanging on for dear life on the side of a buildling, and somebody comes along offering to help you. Of course you agree, but then they tell you that it will be $1,000 or else you're going to have to find your own way up.

Now certainly this is a dick move, but is it immoral? How can it be said that the passerby has a moral obligation to help the struggling man? It can be said that we would like if the passerby would help, but there is no clear moral argument that says you must help the struggling man.

Now let's throw something else into the mix. Same situation. You are hanging on to the edge of a building for dear life and a passerby offers to help for $1,000. You begrudgingly agree to pay because the only other alternative is death. But suddenly Reggie the Regulator. "You can't charge him that much for that! I will take you into custody if you continue this transaction." The passerby shrugs and walks away, and so does Reggie.

Alternatively, say there is a free market, there is no regulation and for argument's sake let's say everybody is a dick and wants to charge money to save you from the edge of the building. The passerby offers you the same deal, helping you up for $1,000. Not buying into it, you call out for help. Somebody else hears the call, and decides that it's easy money. They offer to help you for $100. Still not buying into it, you call out for help again. The first guy says "You know what, it's really not that hard to just pull you up. Takes like 2 seconds. $50." The same process continues until you get a reasonable deal, say $5 and a thank you. And this is assuming that every single person is a self-entitled dick, which isn't the case in reality.

The situation we are in right now is the first situation, because FDA regulations make it so the passerby is the ONLY person who is allowed to go up to the roof and help you, and if anybody else tries, they are faced with fines and potentially prison. This is where the immorality lies. It's not in the market, it's in the system of regulation that is perpetuated by the symbiotic relationship between Corporations and Politicians.

There are many arguments to be had from that point on, but it is extremely important to correctly identify the problem.
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#164 to #163 - anon (12/21/2015) [-]
Thanks anon lawyer man.

As for the whole corporation politician partnerships, that's a pretty hard problem to break....

If only someone with a decent knowledge of law could spit ball a few ideas for how the system could be changed for the better, and was willing to post it so it could be poked at for a while until it was decent....
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#145 to #1 - anon (12/21/2015) [-]
Problem is the Government created these laws. No matter what you do or who you are the government has all the right fingers in all the right assholes to **** anyone they know is going to try and **** them.
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#153 to #145 - anon (12/21/2015) [-]
It's not like it's an accident the laws are the way they are. Corporations spend a lot of money every two years to filter who gets into congress.
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User avatar #97 to #1 - failtolawl (12/21/2015) [-]
Ah yes, because if there were NO regulations he would have kept the price down.

Gibbon
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#155 to #97 - anon (12/21/2015) [-]
Read a Book (Dirty Version)

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+7
#9 to #1 - bann (12/21/2015) [-]
I had a law professor who argued that one of the most nobll things a lawyer can do is defend someone who did something immoral but didn't technically break the law.

If you punish the immoral outside of the law, than you lack any obligation to change the law to something society deems moral. You can't just stamp out problems as the arise, you need to fix the system.
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#158 to #9 - anon (12/21/2015) [-]
Your professor's a drooling moron, since the noble thing to do would be ACTUALLY CHANGE THE ******* SYSTEM.
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#181 to #158 - bann (12/22/2015) [-]
...Why would anyone work to change a system they don't see as broken? If you don't expose the faults in something, it'll be presumed that it works fine.

I'm not saying "if it ain't broke don't fix it", but if there's so many things broken on any given day that the things that are presumed good are often overlooked.
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User avatar #51 to #1 - thehooligan (12/21/2015) [-]
Thank you for not being another facebook sheep, and understanding that one is actually illegal while the other is not.
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#55 to #51 - anon (12/21/2015) [-]
I think the point of this is to show how ****** up our laws are. Obviously one is illegal and the other is not, but the more immoral thing should be illegal if you had to choose.
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User avatar #56 to #55 - thehooligan (12/21/2015) [-]
"It is now illegal to alter the price of a product you legally own" ...ok. It's ****** up yes, but the law wouldn't make any sense.
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User avatar #118 to #56 - inyourmind (12/21/2015) [-]
Depending on the situation it can in fact be illegal to far over price a product. Usually this only applies to essential items that are basic human requirements (basic food stuffs, water, natural gas, electricity and such) because the inability for the poor to afford them puts a significant portion of the population at risk and whose lives are valued higher then a companies profit.

In Shkreli's case what he did was immoral but not illegal as there were other options available for people and the price increase did not significantly reduce access to the drug (insurance pays for it either way). However he would have faced anti-price gouging laws if there were no alternatives and the price increase resulted in a significant portion of people losing access to a drug required to survive.

It should be pointed out that price gouging laws do not stop life savings drugs from being more expensive then the average person can afford if the production of them is high to begin with.
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User avatar #182 to #118 - seymourg [OP](12/22/2015) [-]
real glad I posted this content to get filled with rants and arguments
nah but I'm glad you guys are debating it, for where else does change begin?
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#77 to #56 - vparrish (12/21/2015) [-]
Plus you can't really make laws based solely on morality. Otherwise you then have to decide whose morals are right and whose are wrong. Just because you think something is imoral it doesn't mean I do. What makes your opinion any better than mine.
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User avatar #138 to #77 - beardgasm (12/21/2015) [-]
Usually that is exactly how lawmaking works. It depends on whose morals represent the majority viewpoint. If laws aren't based on morals, then what are they based on?
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#184 to #138 - vparrish (12/22/2015) [-]
Logic and necessity. There are many laws that allow for what most people would consider imoral behavior, but are necessary or logical in purpose. Imminent domain for example. It allows the government to take your land whether you like it or not. Many criminals are released, or escape prosecution because of minor technicalities. People become outraged because of this, but these laws are necessary to protect a person's rights.
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#114 to #51 - skebaba (12/21/2015) [-]
Price gouging is illegal.
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User avatar #2 to #1 - ubercookieboy (12/21/2015) [-]
^ This guy gets it
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User avatar #7 to #1 - hitlersgayabortion (12/21/2015) [-]
what the comic is meant to point out is that both should be illegal.

ripping off wall street investors is illegal because they are powerful and can lobby for laws in their favor, while ordinary people with cancer don't get similar protections.

if you really want to delve into it, it's apples and oranges, but I think there's a valid point here.
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User avatar #12 to #7 - europe (12/21/2015) [-]
If you own a product, why shouldn't you get to change the price as you please?
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#37 to #12 - ygdosst ONLINE (12/21/2015) [-]
Because that only works in a free market, where competitors are able to produce the same or similar product at a lower price.
However, the Abuse of American Copyright/Patent Laws prevents that

As Government has eliminated competitors to a necessity, it's only right they limit and place price ceilings on said necessity.

Lawmakers should realize that Capitalism is fine, but when you're not a real capitalism you can't plug your your fingers in your ears and pretend it is, you have to act accordingly to what ******** hybrid system you currently have.
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User avatar #16 to #12 - quantumranger (12/21/2015) [-]
Because that might not be fair I'm being sarcastic? Mocking in some way at least
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#19 to #16 - sarcasticone (12/21/2015) [-]
GIF
**sarcasticone used "*roll picture*"**
**sarcasticone rolled image**Welcome to American capitalism..
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#20 to #19 - sarcasticone (12/21/2015) [-]
**sarcasticone used "*roll picture*"**
**sarcasticone rolled image** joking with you too bb.
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#32 to #16 - anon (12/21/2015) [-]
life's not fair
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User avatar #34 to #12 - maxismahname (12/21/2015) [-]
I have to agree. If you own a product and aren't allowed to change the price, well how would that work, because if prices are regulated, then where is the competition. If people got to vote on the prices of everything, then that would probably not work out either.. I feel like people would find loopholes in anything.
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#115 to #34 - skebaba (12/21/2015) [-]
Then by that logic we should ban patents and IPs. They limit competition. It'd be ok to put any price, if the copy right and patents were removed
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#44 to #7 - anon (12/21/2015) [-]
first off, securities fraud isn't illegal because investors are rich, it's Illegal because you're basically stealing from the company and other investors and theft is illegal. secondly the raising of the price wasn't illegal because there are no laws against doing so but if you make a law restricting what you can charge you get into a whole slew of problems about anti-trust laws and whether something is a monopoly or not. thirdly there was already an, admittedly legal gray, solution. legally pharmacies are allowed to combine drugs if there's a benefit to patient and the can do so with no legal repercussions so they were already looking to combine the drug he bought and another drug you have to take with the first pill anyway so it would just allow them to bypass his patent on the drug by allowing them to synthesize their own so long as they combined it with another drug before selling it.
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#116 to #44 - skebaba (12/21/2015) [-]
Except price gouging already IS illegal.
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#8 to #7 - anon (12/21/2015) [-]
what has cancer got to do with it?
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User avatar #15 to #1 - andywazowski ONLINE (12/21/2015) [-]
B-but, muh 1%
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#57 to #1 - anon (12/21/2015) [-]
>Left
Lawful evil
>Right
Unlawful evil
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#58 to #57 - anon (12/21/2015) [-]
I mean chaotic. chit
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#3 to #1 - anon (12/21/2015) [-]
Exactly, ya he was a dick about it but it was technically legal
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#14 - isolovegames (12/21/2015) [-]
He just needs to grow a thicker skin.
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User avatar #70 to #60 - heartlessrobot (12/21/2015) [-]
Well, he did sell unrelated, life threatening secrets to China, Russia, and pretty much everyone else.
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#154 to #70 - anon (12/21/2015) [-]
sauce
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#121 to #70 - skebaba (12/21/2015) [-]
Then they shouldn't had spied on people and none of that would had happened, now would it?
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User avatar #122 to #121 - heartlessrobot (12/21/2015) [-]
Every country with the capability to do so, is spying on as many people as possible.
It's no secret.
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#124 to #122 - skebaba (12/21/2015) [-]
Then they have no right to complain when the whistle is blown.
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User avatar #125 to #124 - heartlessrobot (12/21/2015) [-]
That would be like blowing the whistle on an army for having guns.
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#126 to #125 - skebaba (12/21/2015) [-]
Only if it was illegal for them to have them in the first place. NSA is a constitution violation and should be abolished.
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#25 - evilexecutive (12/21/2015) [-]
Okay, so apparently 99% of all the people I know have no freakin' clue what the hell this guy was doing to piss off Wall Street, but here we go. Basically the gist of it was that he was sabotaging companies to force their stock prices to go down.

Martin Shkreli would research into companies that were about to put a new drug up onto the market, and then he would buy a ******** of Put Contracts on the company, which are a form of security that increases in value as the stock price of the company goes down. Then he went and bribed the FDA to deny these companies their drugs on the market, so that the stock prices would go down drastically, making him millions.

This is basically Insider Trading, which is a form of fraud.
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+32
User avatar #18 - thechosentroll (12/21/2015) [-]
And here we see a person who has no ******* idea what a law is.

He is legally allowed to change the price of the drug. It's his company. It's dickish, but perfectly legal. Stealing **** is not legal.

Just because you don't like something doesn't mean it's a crime. In fact, that **** is why we have laws - so you can't just shoot someone, because they cut you off in traffic or break someones' knees, because they parked in a handicapped spot. If the court of public opinion had any actual power, people would be arrested for wearing hoodies after 7PM or being black. That ****** why we have the ACTUAL court to decide who's guilty and who's not. Along with these nifty little things called laws. And being a dick is still pretty damn legal. And thank god it is or we'd all be in prison.
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#90 to #18 - gotohemp has deleted their comment [-]
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User avatar #123 to #18 - inyourmind (12/21/2015) [-]
Depending on the situation it can in fact be illegal to far over price a product. Usually this only applies to essential items that are basic human requirements (basic food stuffs, water, natural gas, electricity and such) because the inability for the poor to afford them puts a significant portion of the population at risk and whose lives are valued higher then a companies profit.

In Shkreli's case what he did was immoral but not illegal as there were other options available for people and the price increase did not significantly reduce access to the drug (insurance pays for it either way). However he would have faced anti-price gouging laws if there were no alternatives and the unwarranted price increase resulted in a significant portion of people losing access to a drug required to survive.

It should be pointed out that price gouging laws do not stop life savings drugs from being more expensive then the average person can afford if the production of them is high to begin with.
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#175 to #18 - suttballion (12/22/2015) [-]
Political comic artists get all their information from the titles on the front page of reddit so they can let others decide for them what to be enraged about.
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#21 to #18 - anon (12/21/2015) [-]
That is the point.

His first act should not have been legal. It's the point that ripping off the terminally ill to the point that many would die from not getting their drug is fine, but making the rich lose some bucks means imprisonment.
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User avatar #27 to #21 - thepizzadevourer (12/21/2015) [-]
It's only the convoluted mess that is American Pharmacological law that allowed him to have a monopoly in the first place. As soon as he jacked the prices, competitors began working on alternatives but it'll be years, possibly decades before any of those are approved. Before that, nobody bothered because it takes literally millions of dollars to get a drug approved by the FDA.
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User avatar #23 to #21 - thechosentroll (12/21/2015) [-]
Because he ******* owns the drug. It's your choice what you do with your things. Even if it's dickish, it's how things work. We tried a system where people aren't allowed to do that once. It was called communism. A lot of people died and the rich STILL managed to game the system and get away with anything they did. They've been doing that **** since the days when one cave man ended up with more shiny rocks that the rest and thought to himself " **** everyone, I can do what I want now.".
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#28 to #23 - anon (12/21/2015) [-]
"question the status quo and you're a Stalin apologist"
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User avatar #29 to #28 - thechosentroll (12/21/2015) [-]
No, it's just a roundabout way of saying "You are ******* retarded. Every time people try to fix it, they fail and a ******** of people die."
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#35 to #29 - anon (12/21/2015) [-]
Cold War red states sucked because they were mostly Stalinist, which was itself a very specific, unorthodox interpretation of Marxism that even commies in the fifties were skeptical about. If you aren't intentionally trying some "Socialism in One Country" ******** you're not going to have the same result.
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User avatar #36 to #35 - thechosentroll (12/21/2015) [-]
As someone from a former socialist country, which was part of the soviet block, I could write you a ******* essay on why both communism and socialism are ****** in their very core, but this isn't about either of those. It's about democracy and how just because you don't like something and it's dickish it doesn't mean it should be illegal.
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#39 to #36 - anon (12/21/2015) [-]
So murdering people by refusing them drugs is better than murdering people by refusing them state amenities? I'm sorry your country had a **** time under the USSR but this kinda sounds like the Cuban refugees in America that protested opening diplomatic relations because they were butthurt about how much easier it'd make things for future citizens.
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User avatar #47 to #39 - thechosentroll (12/21/2015) [-]
No, it's ******* horrible. They both suck and I wish neither had ever happened. However, making it illegal to do **** like that would create an absurd number of problems. For starters, it'd give people precedent. And legal precedent is some serious ******* **** . If some legal way to lower the price of products popped up out of nowhere, you can bet your ass some greedy cunts will exploit it, like they've exploited every single legal precedent against major companies ever. Lower the absurd price of drugs and pharmaceutical companies are just gonna stop making them. Believe it or not, none of them spend years and millions on research and trials out of the kindness of their hearts. They do it, because they want to make a profit. They have something, which people want, which people ******* NEED. They know they're going to make a ******** of cash, so they research the drugs that will make them that cash. And rival companies them go "We want cash, too. We'll make a BETTER drug.". If you get rid of the profit, they won't become less greedy, they'll just go do something else. No one goes "Well, **** . I got sued out the ass and now I'm hardly making a profit on these drugs. Guess I'll just keep doing what I'm doing.", no they go "Yeah, **** this. Get your meds from some other idiot. I'm opening a Nike factory in the Philippines.".

Making it legal to pursue dickheads like him will make the world a better place for about a month, then make it suck even harder. Honestly, the only viable solution would be to make some sort of supervisory body that goes "Yeah, this is ******* unreasonable. We're not allowing you to jack up the prices." like we have in the EU. Unfortunately, that wouldn't really work in the US. The reason the EU is a horrid, bureaucratic mess and not a corrupt horrid bureaucratic mess is because it's made up of a ******** of people that hate eachothers' guts. In the US, all the congressmen, who everyone forgets exist, and all the lobbyists of the large companies would bribe their way through the inspectors and STILL do what they want, because they'd win more that way.
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User avatar #109 to #47 - Shiny (12/21/2015) [-]
Demand creates supply. If the current pharmaceutical industry refuses to cooperate if prices are lowered, then they can **** off, we can investigate the illegal **** they're invariably doing while they're at it. A new industry will crop up as people jump at the chance to make some dosh.
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#30 to #23 - anon (12/21/2015) [-]
The difference is. Modern day humans are supposed to be capable of working together more and caring about others. Supposedly.

In order to facilitate clear and final say on a matter in the old ways, we have to ignore most of this...supposed "civilisation". As civil as it gets.

He's a small man who does not appear to lift. He would be crushed, rended, thrown or otherwise broken and someone else would take ownership of the drug. If you want to get into comparing to cave men.
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User avatar #31 to #30 - thechosentroll (12/21/2015) [-]
Supposedly. Doesn't mean they are. Doesn't mean they've ever been. And it's a ******* metaphor. There wasn't literally a cave man who went " **** bitches, get shiny rocks". Money buys you power. Power, which overcomes physical limitations. That scrawny ************ could hire an army of bodyguards to beat your ass to a bloody pulp. Like pretty much every asshole with money has been doing for ******* ever.
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#41 to #31 - anon (12/21/2015) [-]
All it takes is one of those bodyguards to care about people more than money and it's game over for him. Alternatively. What he did is so disgusting, that more people than his money can buy bodyguards would come for him. Money isn't power. Money is a tool. And you can build so strong a shelter with only one tool.
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User avatar #49 to #41 - thechosentroll (12/21/2015) [-]
And yet that never happens. Funny how everyone's a saint and an altruist until you wave a wad of cash in their face.
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#159 to #49 - anon (12/21/2015) [-]
Gee, you're sure bitter and jaded.

PS: Eastern Europe socialism wasn't socialism, it was psuedo-communism with Russia breathing down your necks. Scandinavian here, and socialism's been working out pretty nicely for us.

Also, American isn't a real capitalist country, sorry to break it to you. That'd be Rapture from Bioshock or something. America has far too many rules and regulations on the market because guess what? True capitalism works even more poorly than true communism, which works really ******* badly.
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User avatar #173 to #159 - thechosentroll (12/22/2015) [-]
You don't have ******* socialism. You have democracy with a slight hint of socialism. Call me when they take 80% of your income as taxes.
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#117 to #23 - skebaba (12/21/2015) [-]
Patents and IPs should be banned, since they ruin capitalism. If you can't manufacture something cheaper than competition, then you don't deserve to increase the price. True capitalism is ok, not fake "capitalism".
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User avatar #170 to #21 - thejusticar (12/22/2015) [-]
im pretty sure since most people have insurance that it would of been covered that it, they would most likely end up paying the same price so its not like he is walking up to them in a hospital bed and demands they pay him 750$ to take a pill, the real losers were the insurance agencys. and it was a drug that was being cut off by the FDA so while he did raise the price he also in some way saved lives until a competitor came along and made a cheaper alt. im also willing to be he payed a pretty penny to buy those drugs so he would have to increase the price to make a profit. all these people saying "dur hur just double the original cost and you can still make a profit", and no thats not how it works, buying an obscure drug that not alot of people use isnt going to be cheap, he was most likely stiffed by them into paying lots of money for it.

if im an idiot and i got this all wrong, please let me know in a reply, im going off what ive heard.
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User avatar #144 - ecowolfrb (12/21/2015) [-]
Yes, America makes it even worse to be ill. It is possible for your life to suck more than finding out you have cancer. Just remember this and let it represent our healthcare, even with Obamacare and all it's ***** . There is a TV show about a man becoming a drug lord in order to pay for his health care, and in the show he didn't originally want to accept treatment because he didn't want to cripple his family with debt.
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#157 to #144 - bwiedieter (12/21/2015) [-]
I knew it! Breaking Bad was a documentary after all.
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#38 - anotherhaloguy (12/21/2015) [-]
Sorry but doing what he did was fully legal... Satanic levels of dickhole but legal, so they probably dug deep into him to find something he did do illegally just to arrest the ****
What they did was great and basically what they did to Al Capone
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#120 to #38 - skebaba (12/21/2015) [-]
Except laws were made to benefit the community as a whole, which this one doesn't do. The spirit of the law > Literality of the law
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#22 - economicfreedom (12/21/2015) [-]
The government created the monopoly
Being able to jack up prices like that is entirely the POINT of patents
If you don't like Shkreli, think about patent and copyright reform.
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User avatar #84 to #22 - reform (12/21/2015) [-]
sexi
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User avatar #107 to #22 - Shiny (12/21/2015) [-]
The patent and copyright systems do not force people to be sociopaths.
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User avatar #186 to #107 - economicfreedom (12/22/2015) [-]
but people are predictable
inelastic demand and monopolies are a bad mix
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User avatar #187 to #186 - Shiny (12/22/2015) [-]
They're an inevitability.
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User avatar #53 to #22 - lolollo (12/21/2015) [-]
The point of a patent is to preserve intellectual property, so that some misc. inventor can't go having his blueprints for "the cure to stupid" stolen bybsome assbutt who barely knows the first thing about what stupid even is. You're able to try and replicate that cure, but then you would be able to patent that second cure yourself, to get your own royalties. If you can't, and you still want to sell the cure, it forces you to do business with the original inventor, so he gets his dues, so you don't just get the idea to steal it and pass it off as your own idea.

Kinda like a sane, and logical version of plaigerism.
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#119 to #22 - zythaxx (12/21/2015) [-]
The patent on that drug expired, so no patent issue with that.
The reason competing companies could not put that product on the market the very next week is due to FDA regulations on production facilities.
So, SomeDouchbag raises the price on non-patent-protected drug, Competitor1 has a facility that could make 50 million doses in the next week, goes to the FDA for authorization. Which takes months if all goes well, years if it doesn't, and includes a ceiling for how many units will be produces before triggering another round of authorization. It's the prototypical bureaucratic maze.

SomeDouchbag should do hard time if he violated the law.
The FDA needs to allow for common sense in the process. Kafka and Rand wrote warnings, they shouldn't be used as instruction manuals.

Whoo. I need a nap...
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User avatar #33 - maniacaltomcat (12/21/2015) [-]
I may be wrong but I imagine the people who made the arrest were more than happy to do so not because of the charges but because of how he hiked up the price of those meds, they just had no grounds for an arrest before.
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User avatar #110 - deansg (12/21/2015) [-]
Do none of the people who thumb this up realize what private property / rule of law is?
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#130 to #110 - anon (12/21/2015) [-]
are you just an asshole?
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#171 - anon (12/22/2015) [-]
There's an incredible about of misinformation about the incident with the pills that people keeping spreading around and acting like it's fact.

First, he never ripped off the terminally ill. Insurance companies were the ones paying the high price for the pills, the person who needed the medication paid the original price.

Second, he even stated that if you could not afford to pay for the pills because you didn't have insurance, his company would pay for them. He was NEVER charging the people in need $750 per pill. Ever. He got a lot of money by ripping off insurance companies, but that doesn't make for as fun of a story to the media.

Third, it wasn't even illegal to charge that much for the pills. It WAS illegal to commit fraud. There's a huge difference between them, and whoever made this is an idiot that thinks it's just a case of "lol he pissed off rich people".
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#172 to #171 - anon (12/22/2015) [-]
amount of misinformation*

I should edit before I post things
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#141 - anon (12/21/2015) [-]
I look at it this way: people WOULD have thrown the bastard in prison for the one on the left if they could, but it wasn't illegal so they couldn't. What happened on the right gave them the excuse they needed to arrest him.

The same thing happened to Al Capone - nobody could arrest him for the organized crime gang he was running, so they did what they COULD do and had the IRS catch him on a Catch-22 for Tax Evasion.
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User avatar #135 - batmanbeyonddgrave ONLINE (12/21/2015) [-]
HOLD THE GODDAMN PHONE! You're telling me being a dick isn't illegal, but doing illegal stuff is illegal? Nope, don't believe you.
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User avatar #101 - serhiy (12/21/2015) [-]
I feel he's bit of a scapegoat for the pharma industry to draw attention away from the other companies who are continuing to jack up prices.
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#61 - anon (12/21/2015) [-]
What if I told you you can't send people to jail for being rude.
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User avatar #95 to #61 - thedutchs (12/21/2015) [-]
I would tell you that he got sent to jail for fraud.
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#59 - dragonofhate (12/21/2015) [-]
It's not a crime to raise prices, otherwise Gas Stations would be in a whole lot of trouble. To lie about something though it completely different. I would hope that he would be arrested if he was ripping off the comsumers with even more negligence. Such has placebos or even ingredients and did not work as they should have.
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#54 - thamuz (12/21/2015) [-]
I guess he shouldn't have been lying about his shekels..
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User avatar #50 - lolollo (12/21/2015) [-]
It's because what he did wasn't illegal, but is a class case for why monopolies are illegal. For us to have the free market kek that we do, it needs to be legal for business to ask any price they want for their product. The way you get around it is by doing your part as a member of that free market, you don't buy the product. They ask the prices they do because you pay them. If this guy is the only one capable of producing the drug, that's where the issue is.

We've grown so accustomed to it being "someone else's responsibility" to react to moral injustices that we've grown complacent to do anything ourselves. If you hate that Apple hikes their prices, don't ******* buy Apple...
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User avatar #52 to #50 - sketchysketchist (12/21/2015) [-]
Pretty much this.

If you own something, you have the right to charge as much as you want. Even if it's unethical or even against everything you learned in business.


Just be happy he's going to jail and losing everything.
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#127 to #52 - skebaba (12/21/2015) [-]
That'd only work if ******** like patents would be banned. Or atleast limited to 15 years max, until it expires permanently.
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User avatar #140 to #127 - sketchysketchist (12/21/2015) [-]
Yeah, I agree.
There should be a limit for how long someone can own the right to tech before it's free or anyone to improve it/make a cheaper version of it.
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#185 to #140 - skebaba (12/22/2015) [-]
Yeah. The irony is: patents were done originally, to encourage developing new stuff and forwarding science. Then some assholes abused it, and now you see what happened.
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User avatar #188 to #185 - sketchysketchist (12/22/2015) [-]
Yeah, the government or whoever's responsible for this **** needs to pay close attention and see how this affects everyone in the long run, and realize when people are just being greedy.
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#17 - anon (12/21/2015) [-]
The only reason we know about him is because the media kicked up a fuss. Anyone else notice how it wasn't people who were unable to afford this drug, people with this illness? Nope, just other pharmaceutical ceos and liberal lawmakers who wanted to pander to their base, not actual people affected by this change.
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#13 - anon (12/21/2015) [-]
Nobody cared.... I forgot all the massive flak he got for it.


Oh wait...
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